"Next Gold"

Katie Monks sings the way drunk people do at weddings—loudly, messily, and with absolute conviction. You can make out about five words total on “Next Gold”, the first track from Dilly Dally’s forthcoming debut (out this spring via Royal Mountain), but the Toronto four-piece’s Pixies-style grunge pop is no less riveting for being incomprehensible. In fact, that obscurity is central to their appeal: Monks mumbles, slurs and shouts with more charisma than most vocalists can muster perfectly on-key. Dilly Dally have been playing shows locally in Toronto for a few years now, and they’ve cultivated an intriguing friction while doing so. For all the seemingly spontaneous vigor in the vocals, the instrumentation feels precise and deliberate, tightly coiled where Monks is all sprawl and ferocity. The result recalls the Strokes at their best: it seems as if anything could happen, but they’ve got everything under control.